The US Patent Office latterly published a patent by Ford foran autonomous police vehiclethat could be programmed with “ machine learnedness tools ( for instance , deep neural networks ) to find good concealment slur to see violators of traffic laws . ” First spottedby Motor 1 , the patent of invention — which represents more of a moonshot task than a pending conception — would nonetheless really round out the most dystopian visions of our future .
outdo the capabilities of current policing automaton bysecurity company like Knightscope , the autonomous fleet would have huge surveillance capabilities . The patent filed in 2016 references camera , road sensor , permit denture reader , touch sensitive dialog box , speakers , LIDAR , ultrasound sensors and microphones , satellite connectivity , and microwave radar detector to immortalize the speed of other vehicles ( ominously referred to as a “ laser gun ” ) .
Further , the patent of invention references machine learning and neural networks throughout . AI is bothrapidly spay police enforcementand promptingalarms from privacy advocatesconcerned about a dawning surveillance state . Ford imagines the robocar would connect to “ a locally store track record of drivers ” or even turgid government databases to swan drivers ’ licenses . With these powerful transcription and computer memory chance , even momentaneous interactions with the car could potentially put down the public in a database somewhere .
The filing includes these diagrams of how the car might mesh :
This first diagram is an overview of the many thing the robocar could do in varying scenario . You ’ll take down the tree at 180 . According to the patent , the robocar “ may , free-base on machine see through deep neural connection(s ) , find a post behind an objective 180 ( show up as a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in FIG . 1 ) and car park at that spot behind target 180 so as to be invisible . ” stop number traps like this are an old police trick , but training AI to obscure from human is all kinds of worrisome .
Ford imagine the vehicles could be attached to a local internet of surveillance tv camera that will send signals to robocars when they enter traffic infringement . As shown in the letters patent figure , the cams could be impound to stoplights and stop signs themselves , trigger as soon as a driver , say , runs a crimson sparkle or changes lanes without signal . A meshing of television camera designed to pick up speed demon , yet the AI still needs to hide ? Weird .
police force already use artificial intelligence operation tosend police squad cars to placesthey have a bun in the oven more crime , a practice called call “ live smudge policing . ” It would n’t be a stint to imagine departments sending robocars to areas where there are more traffic intrusion , but there ’s a serious risk for preconception here . After the Ferguson , Missouri riot in 2015 , aDOJ story find that local policeover - patrolled black neighborhoods and stopped black drivers significantly more often that white drivers . If self-reliant police vehicles swear on traffic violation recorded by area , how do we know they would n’t double these biases ?
The second diagram in the patent record a hypothetical situation where the robocar has spotted someone speeding . The car would utilise “ wireless communication ” to connect with the driver of the zip vehicle and overstretch them over . From there , the robocar would plant the personal identity of the driver . The patent is n’t open on how on the button this would ferment , only say that valid responses from the pedestrian gondola may include “ an double of a number one wood ’s license of a human driver of the first fomite … verifying the authenticity of the driver ’s license . ”
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Ford ’s patent is that it states its robocar would be used for “ routine law tasks . ” Of of course , there ’s nothing routine about being hunted by an robot police car that learns to veil in leafage like a Green Beret . right on now , officers are using dronesto keep tabloid on drivers , but this represents the ultimate end of smart policing : a driverless surveillance bot that ca n’t be harmed , conclude with , or , stopped .
[ The DriveviaMotor 1 ]
AI / ethic
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